


A Lot Like Christmas

by fabrega



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Advent Calendar, Blackwatch Era, Christmas, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-15 08:30:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13027188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: "You've got twenty-four of these things?""One to be delivered each day between December 1st and December 24th, yes."Well, let it never be said that Gabe Reyes is a man who does things halfway.





	A Lot Like Christmas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hypokidd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypokidd/gifts).



> Happy holidays, hypo!! You asked for something soft, and I hope you like how this turned out!

On the morning of December 1st, Athena wakes Jesse about an hour before his alarm is supposed to go off. He grumbles for a minute, groping half-asleep for his alarm before discovering that turning it off has no effect on the unpleasant chiming noise echoing through his quarters. 

He sits up, scrubs his hands over his face and back through his hair, and glares up at the ceiling. "I'm awake," he tells the ceiling, very much aware that Athena communicates through the computer console in the wall on the other side of the room.

"Apologies, Agent McCree," Athena says, her tone soothing. Jesse immediately feels bad about the whole ceiling bit, and then immediately feels weird for thinking he could hurt Athena's feelings somehow.

"What kind of emergency do we have today?" Jesse asks, getting out of bed and wrapping a blanket around his waist as he pads over to the computer screen. Gabe's been away on his top secret undercover mission for three weeks now, and it had only been a matter of time before a Blackwatch mission hit the kind of snag that required command intervention. Gabe trusted that Jesse could handle it, whatever 'it' was; that's why he'd left Jesse in charge while he was gone.

"There's a message for you from Commander Reyes," Athena tells him.

Jesse blinks at the screen. "That can't be right," he says aloud. Gabe's mission is so top secret that even Jesse doesn't know where he's gone, so undercover that they aren't doing check-ins, just a pre-arranged pick-up when it's done, and it's not supposed to be done for at least six more weeks. If there's a message from Gabe, something's gone very much...if not badly, then at least not according to plan.

"He left strict instructions that it be delivered to you today," Athena says.

"It's not--he didn't send it today?"

"No, he recorded it before he left, with, as stated, strict instructions that it be delivered to you today." Does Athena sound amused? Surely not.

"Did he ask that you deliver it to me at Unreasonable O'Clock in the morning too?" Jesse grumbles, starting to type in the series of passcodes he needs to access his messages.

"The Blackwatch Commander's official availability starts at 0600--" Athena begins, but Jesse waves her away.

"Next time you've got non-emergency messages for me, wait until I'm already awake."

"Noted, Agent McCree."

 _That_ sounds sarcastic, Jesse's sure of it. Jesse presses his thumb on the scanner, and his messages pop up. Sure enough, amidst a sea of mission reports, equipment requests, and meeting invites, there's one new message from Gabe Reyes.

Jesse opens it.

"Hey, Jesse," Gabe says, and he smiles. Watching it, Jesse smiles too. "I'm sorry I can't be there with you. I hate leaving you like this--I know how big and empty that bed feels with just one person in it--and I especially hate doing it at the holidays. I was looking forward to spending Christmas with you, and I know you were too. Know that if there had been any other way to get this done, I would've done it." 

Gabe goes quiet for a moment, looking away from the camera, and Jesse finds himself reaching up with the hand that's not holding onto his blanket to ghost his fingers along the sweep of Gabe's jaw, not quite touching the screen, certainly not touching Gabe.

"I know this isn't a substitute for being there," he says, looking back to the camera, seeming to meet Jesse's eyes. "But it's the best I can do, in the circumstances. Wherever I am, I'm thinking about you, and I love you."

The vid ends, Gabe's face frozen on the screen, his lips still pursed to pronounce _you_. Jesse lets his fingers trail across Gabe's mouth, then reaches up to touch his own.

That night, when all the crises of the day have passed and he finally is ready to collapse into bed and sleep forever--he doesn't know how Gabe does this, day in and day out--he has Athena play the message back again. It's not as good as having Gabe here, but it's something.

❄️

Jesse is awake for approximately ten seconds on the morning of December 2nd before Athena greets him.

"Emergency?" he asks. He'd only just turned off his alarm--it's later than yesterday, but still too early.

"Another message from Commander Reyes." 

Jesse pauses, halfway out of bed. "Another one?"

"He expressed the hope that his messages could be a sort of 'Advent calendar' when he was recording them," Athena says.

Jesse approaches the computer and starts accessing his messages. "You've got twenty-four of these things?"

"One to be delivered each day between December 1st and December 24th, yes."

Well, let it never be said that Gabe Reyes is a man who does things halfway. Jesse pulls up today's message, then pulls up yesterday's next to it--Gabe's wearing the same hoodie, his hair mussed in the same precise way; he must have sat down and recorded all of these in one go.

"Hey, Jesse," Gabe says, and he smiles. 

_Hey_ , Jesse whispers back.

"Figure this is the last one that'll be a surprise--you've probably already gotten Athena to rat out my clever plan. You're too smart for your own good sometimes." Gabe's smile goes wider and brighter. "It's just one thing that I love about you. I know you're doing great there without me. I always knew you could run the whole place by yourself if it came to it. Still, I miss you and wish I was there with you now. I bet it's getting cold; I bet you're complaining every time you get out of bed."

"An organization this important and with this much money should be able to _heat their floors right_ ," Jesse grumbles.

"There's a box under the bed, up next to the wall on my side. It's for you, and you should open it."

Jesse pauses the vid and goes to wriggle under their bed for the package. It's wrapped neatly in colored paper, with a simple bow on top. Jesse tears into it and opens the box to find a pair of slippers in his size. They're hard-soled and lined with some kind of very soft synthetic fur, and when Jesse turns them over in his hands, he notices the small plush spur on the heel of each of them and laughs out loud.

He goes back to Gabe's vid, padding across the floor in his brand new slippers. "I hope you like them. I hope they keep you warm when I can't. I hope things are going well for you. I miss you, and I love you."

Jesse wiggles his toes in the plush fur of his new slippers and thinks about how much he misses Gabe too.

❄️

"I know the holidays haven't always been the best time for you," Gabe says, staring out at Jesse from December 4th's vid message.

Jesse chuckles. That is...more than a little bit of an understatement. 

Christmas as a kid had always been a crapshoot: between their poverty, stuff with his dad, and then the actual war for the fate of humanity that broke out, holiday cheer was often in short supply. 

In Deadlock, Christmas was an afterthought--he remembers one shipment draped with ornaments dangling from every box and an envelope in his locker marked _holiday bonus_ , stuffed full of cash, but also at least one narrowly-avoided raid around the holidays that they'd spent silently hunkered down avoiding the feds.

Once he'd joined Blackwatch, the holidays were a different kind of weird. Most of the people he was working with had families they spent time with at the holidays instead of hanging around whatever base or watchpoint Jesse happened to be at. He'd volunteered for missions over Christmas his first three years there, desperate to be anywhere else doing anything else; the fourth year, Commander Reyes had found him drunk in the base lounge at 2am on Christmas Day. After that, they'd spent the holidays together, one way or another, both of them making excuses for it--making it complicated, in their own way--until a year or so ago, when their feelings for each other had finally come out and they hadn't needed any more excuses.

This is the first Christmas in a while that he's felt alone. He knows there are people on base, Ana will be around, and Reinhardt, and Genji, a bunch of them who are having their own informal Christmas party on Christmas Eve, but it's not the same.

"I know me being gone isn't helping the holidays be the best time for you either," the vid of Gabe continues. "I know this isn't a conversation, and that you can't push back, can't tell me that you'll make do, that you've made other plans without me, that you'll be just fine. I know you'll be fine; you always are. But this is the first Christmas we've spent apart in years, and I'm not--I'm not feeling fine about it."

Gabe pauses, swallowing visibly. Jesse knows he doesn't think he's good at talking about his feelings, and the way he hesitates over his words makes Jesse bite his lip to hide a smile.

"Maybe we can still have a Christmas, when I get back. We should make the time. I'd like that." In the vid, Gabe smiles at him, and Jesse smiles back.

❄️

There's a knock on the door of the Blackwatch planning meeting Jesse's running on the 6th, and a fresh-faced young woman in an Overwatch uniform sticks her head into the room and asks for _Commander McCree_.

"Do you mean 'Acting-Commander McCree'?" Genji asks, because in this crowd, somebody has to.

"Ain't no _Commander McCree_ here," Jesse drawls, letting his accent thicken on purpose. 

There's a snicker from the back of the room, and the young woman looks around, unsure of what the joke is but pretty sure she doesn't get it. 

Jesse's trained in reading people, and despite her smile, her face says she is quickly running out of patience. He gets up from the planning table and wanders over to the door to show the woman his Overwatch ID badge. "I'm Jesse McCree, will that do?"

"There's a delivery for you," she says. "You'll have to come pick it up."

He's not expecting anything, and he takes and scrutinizes her ID badge before following her out of the room. "Shimada, you're in charge while I'm gone," he calls behind him as he leaves, which may not be the best idea, but Genji will be leading one of the ground teams and he knows the terrain, so there are definitely worse choices to cover for him for ten minutes.

The woman leads him down a series of hallways and out to the delivery dock, where an omnic in a delivery uniform is waiting with a clipboard and a large cardboard box. Jesse knows what a hassle it is to get things on base, knows that this guy and his truck and his delivery were probably double-checked and triple-checked at the gate before he even made it this far--especially as an omnic, which Jesse doesn't quite agree with.

"I found him," the woman tells the omnic. Jesse gives a little wave, and takes the clipboard when it's offered to him. He skims the paperwork, sees that it's just him agreeing that he's received the package, and scribbles a signature on it.

The package, when it's been brought inside and quadruple-checked and finally opened, turns out to be full of five stacked boxes from the bakery off-base that Jesse likes, each filled with a different kind of pastry. They're all fresh today, still mostly warm, and Jesse feels his mouth start to water as he looks them over.

He remembers now Gabe's vid message that morning, how he'd hoped Jesse had a sweet day and how he'd awkwardly stressed the word _sweet_. At the time, Jesse had filed it away as a random bit of weirdness, just Gabe being Gabe, overthinking his feelings. Now, though--

"Gabe, you nerd," Jesse says fondly to himself as he grabs one of his favorite pastries from the boxes and takes a massive bite.

There's no way that Jesse could plausibly eat a dozen pastries himself, let alone _sixty_ , so he sorts the boxes into even mixes and distributes them in the Blackwatch common areas: one in the locker room, two in the lounge, and one in the main office, where they're immediately pounced on by five agents who happen to be in doing their paperwork. The last box he brings with him to his meeting, which is still going when he gets back.

"One of these is missing," Genji says as they open the box Jesse drops on the meeting table.

"What can I say? Perks of being the Acting-Commander." Jesse shrugs and grabs another pastry from the box before taking a seat. They _are_ for him, and he deserves it.

❄️

Athena wakes him before his alarm on December 10th, alarm tone shrilling through his quarters at 0430.

Jesse groans. "Athena! What exactly d'you think you're doing?"

"Apologies, Agent McCree, but I am supposed to alert you if there is an emergency, and there _is_ an emergency."

As if on cue, Jesse's comm starts buzzing on the bedside table. He groans again and answers it.

The situation, when he gets to the control room, isn't good. Genji had taken a risk on the ground, the kind of risk he's good at, the kind of risk that ninety-nine times out of a hundred would have paid off and had everyone home sooner and safer because of it. This was the one in a hundred chance, though, and half of his team has gone dark and it's up to Jesse to figure out how to fix it. There's an extraction to make, and the other teams on the ground to deal with, and their actual mission objective is three times more complicated now and still needs dealing with--and, god, he's going to have to brief the Strike Commander, isn't he...

It's nearly forty hours before he manages to stumble back to his quarters, crisis finally dealt with. He takes a long, warm shower, one hand braced against the wall to keep him standing, and shuffles into his fuzzy slippers and then to the bed, ready to sleep for as long as he's allowed to.

He's barely touched the mattress when Athena chimes at him. His groan is particularly heartfelt, and he lets the tone sound for a second before answering it.

"What could they _possibly_ want now?" he asks, one arm thrown over his face.

"You have two messages from Commander Reyes."

Oh, right, yeah. That. In the excitement of the extraction, he'd forgotten all about Gabe's Advent calendar. He's never too tired to want to see Gabe's face, so he forces himself back up out of bed and over to the computer screen.

"Hey, Jesse," Gabe says, and he smiles. Jesse watches, just barely listening, as Gabe talks about how much he loves Jesse, how he hopes Jesse has been having a good December so far, how he loves Jesse so, so much. The second message starts right after the first, and it does nothing to lessen the tight feeling in Jesse's chest. He's so _tired_ , and he wishes Gabe was here.

The bed, when he returns to it, feels bigger and emptier than it had before. He pulls Gabe's message up on his comm in the dark room, sets the comm on the other pillow and watches the message again.

 _Hey, Jesse_ , Gabe says, and Jesse presses his face into the pillow and tries his best to sleep.

❄️

He wakes late on December 12th, after a night of deep and dreamless sleep. He's still tired, a bone-deep ache, but there's plenty he ought to be up and doing. He owes somebody a debrief on yesterday's snafu, and just because they'd had an emergency didn't mean that the rest of Blackwatch had stopped. There's almost certainly a pile of things waiting on the Commander's desk for his attention.

None of that is what drags him out of bed, though. What drags him out of bed is Athena telling him that there's another message from Commander Reyes waiting for him.

He trudges over to the computer screen and keys in the appropriate passcodes, and there's Gabe, smiling at him.

"Have I told you lately that I love you?" Gabe asks, looking out of the computer screen at him. It's a silly question; they both know that he's said so in every message so far this month. "I don't say it enough. I ought to say it more. It's important to me that you _know_."

"I'm a quick study," Jesse tells the vid, although of course it can't hear him. "Ain't sure how many times you think you need to tell me."

"Do you remember that time in Karachi, with the minister, and the grenades? When the smoke cleared, you looked over at me and you laughed, and you were the best thing I'd ever seen. You still are. And you're capable, and smart, and funny, and--I love you so much, Jesse. I hate when we're apart. I wish I was there."

"You and me both," Jesse tells the vid, but the tight feeling in his chest eases, just a little.

❄️

"Hey, Jesse," Gabe says, and he smiles. "I want to say I hope things have gone smoothly and you haven't had any problems, but we both know that probably hasn't been the case."

Jesse looks at his calendar. It's been less than a week since the big emergency; Gabe had no idea how right he'd be.

"I still hope it's true, though. I also know you're coming up on the big Overwatch holiday party--tomorrow, I think--and I wanted to make sure you were appropriately prepared for it, so if you look in the closet, at the back of the top shelf--"

Jesse pauses the vid, goes to the closet, hoists himself up to snag the wrapped package he had noticed a week and a half ago and had studiously ignored since then. It's wrapped the same way the slippers had been, but the contents of it give under the paper in a way the shoebox the slippers had come in hadn't. When the paper comes off, he's holding a big red holiday sweater, with white and yellow accents. There's a knitted pattern of trees and wreaths on it, but also revolvers and bullets, and it says **BAMF** in big letters across the front. There's so much happening on it and it's so ugly and Jesse _loves_ it.

He starts the vid again, holding the sweater close to his chest.

"--you'll find another gift. You know that surprise project I've been working on for the last few months, the one you're not allowed to see? Well, surprise!” 

Gabe's smile looks nervous, and Jesse holds the sweater out to look at it again. Gabe had _made_ this? No, of course he had. Jesse's seen his ridiculous Halloween costumes; he's not sure there's anything Gabe _can't_ do.

"It's probably a little much, I know, but it matches that belt you picked up when we were on that mission in Texas, and it's--it's another holiday tradition I thought we could have together. You don't have to wear it anywhere if you don't want--"

"I am _absolutely_ wearing this to the holiday party tomorrow," Jesse tells the vid.

"--but if you do, I want to see pictures when I get back." 

Gabe's face goes soft, and Jesse pauses the vid again. How many times he's wanted to capture this expression, the version of Gabe that's just for him--that's a present all by itself.

❄️

He wears the sweater to the holiday party.

It's not even the ugliest ugly sweater there--Genji has one that's neon green with light-up reindeer, and Reinhardt's has more sequins on it than Jesse thinks he's ever seen on any one piece of clothing before. Still, Jesse's gets a lot of compliments, most of them sincere, and he smiles at all of them and says _thanks, it was a gift_.

Jack gives a speech and some awards--Jesse's pretty sure he doesn't have to pay attention to that part, Blackwatch never gets anything--and then somebody pours something harder in the punch bowl and the evening gets a bit wilder.

Angela's the one with the camera, and so he sticks with her for the rest of the night. She sends him the pictures the next morning: Ana watching as Reinhardt attempts karaoke; Torbjorn with his Santa costume half off, up on a table, his drink raised high; Jesse, tipping his hat to Winston while he line-dances; Jack, asleep in a chair, a string of tinsel across his shoulders and loose tinsel in his hair, a star-shaped tree-topper perched precariously on his head; a selfie of Jesse and Angela, with Genji making faces in the background. 

She also sends a vid, four or five of them mugging for the camera, and Jesse elbowing each of them as best he can until they all manage to say, mostly in unison _WE MISS YOU, COMMANDER REYES!_ In the vid, Jesse tugs his sweater up into the frame with both hands to show Gabe that he's wearing it, grins at the camera, mouths _I miss you too._

Jesse sends the vid on to Gabe, despite knowing he won't see it until his mission is finished. Hopefully it will be a nice surprise for Gabe, like Gabe's messages have been for him.

❄️

"I bet everything is really festive there," Gabe's vid says. "I bet you've got all the decorations up. I bet it's snowed a lot, and _it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas_." He half-sings the phrase, out of tune, and looks a little sheepish for a moment after he does.

A wave of fondness washes over Jesse, strong enough that he nearly has to pause the vid.

"I'm almost jealous," Gabe continues. "I mean, I hate the snow, it's cold, and wet, and _cold_ , but there's something nice about it, when you can look at it out the window of our room and see it, all peaceful outside. It's not cold where I am, not Christmas at all. I hope you're enjoying the holidays; at least one of us should be."

When the vid is over, Jesse sits for a minute. He's mostly been trying not to care about the holidays this year. Even before they'd been _together_ , Jesse and Gabe had been celebrating Christmas together, and their celebration had crept out into other places: the tinsel along the top of the Blackwatch weapons lockers; the strings of lights in the Blackwatch lounge, blinking gently along the cabinets and countertops; the fragile paper snowflakes stuck up around the Blackwatch transports, made by Fareeha Amari over a decade ago and gently folded and unfolded each year by Gabe with equal parts festivity and nostalgia. Jesse hadn't done any of those things this year, because it hadn't felt right, doing them by himself.

He watches this one again, watches the way Gabe lights up when he talks about the holidays, hums along to Gabe's very incorrect tune, and then goes to the Blackwatch storage closet where he knows Gabe keeps the decorations.

It's too late to put the decorations up like they normally would, only a few days until Christmas, the majority of the people who'd appreciate them gone home for the holidays to spend time with family and friends. He totes the box back to their quarters anyway, puts the tinsel along the windowsill, strings the lights along the door frame, hangs a couple paper snowflakes up around the computer screen--framing Gabe's vids with a little bit of Christmas, the best he can do.

He even puts up the little tree in the corner of the bedroom. That's a relatively new addition to their holiday festivities, something both of them remembered having as a kid but neither had really had the time or space for in a long while. They'd picked it out together last year, and Jesse unpacks and assembles it quickly, setting it up in the same corner of their bedroom they did last year, humming to himself as he works. It still blocks the closet a little bit--they _still_ don't have the space for a Christmas tree, not really--but it looks nice when it's up, and he sets his wrapped gift for Gabe underneath it, a contented feeling making its home in his chest.

He realizes, suddenly, what he's been humming: _it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas._

❄️

The party on Christmas Eve is for the people who, for whatever reason, haven't left for the holidays. Some of them, like Ana and Jack, don't really get that kind of break; some of them, like Jesse and Genji, don't really have anywhere else to go. It's a quieter affair than the full Overwatch party, just a handful of folks in the lounge, eggnog and cookies on the table, a virtual fire crackling in the virtual fireplace.

Jesse wears his ugly sweater again, letting himself sink into its slightly-too-large bulk while people visit around him. He's trying not to sulk, really, because this is a party and he doesn't want to bring anybody else down, but he's been feeling out of sorts all day. He'd spent the morning and part of the afternoon untangling a mess of paperwork one of the Blackwatch teams had dropped on the Commander's desk right before they all left for two weeks. When he'd finally gotten it all sorted out, he'd realized he hadn't watched Gabe's vid for today yet, and when he asked Athena about it, she'd said she didn't have anything for him.

He sips his eggnog and stares at the fire, half-listening as somebody he doesn't recognize from the Overwatch medical corps tells a story about a mission she'd been on with Gérard and Reinhardt in Catalonia around the holidays last year. She gets sidetracked into a meandering explanation about a Catalan holiday tradition that Jesse _can't_ be hearing right, and then his comm buzzes loudly in his pocket. He fishes it out and looks at it. There's one notification, _new message from Gabe_.

He excuses himself from the party and heads back to his quarters, pretty sure his presence won't be missed given the mood he's been in. He'd been trying to figure out a polite way to leave for at least twenty minutes, since before the Catalonia story started; if he's going to be Scrooge, he might as well do it where he won't ruin anyone else's Christmas.

Back at their room, Jesse keys into the computer, types the passcodes he needs to access Gabe's message, probably the last one on his Advent calendar. That makes Jesse hesitate for a moment--the _last_ one, no more surprises waiting for him after this. But he wants to see Gabe's face more than he wants to have this last surprise, so he starts the vid.

"Hey, Jesse," Gabe says, and he smiles. Jesse smiles back without even thinking about it. "It's almost Christmas. I want so badly to be there with you, and..."

There's a noise, and Gabe looks up and away from the camera. He makes a few motions in front of the screen; when Jesse mirrors them in front of his own screen, it minimizes all the windows he has open, showing only the background with the Overwatch logo on it.

Jesse hears his own voice on the vid. "There you are," the vid version of him says, sounding exasperated and fond. As Jesse watches, he comes into frame, walks up behind Gabe, slings an arm across his chest and buries his face in the crook of Gabe's neck. His voice is a little muffled as he continues, "I've been looking for you."

Gabe in the vid smiles. "I had a few last things to take care of before I leave tomorrow. I'll be out in a minute. I'm just finishing up."

Jesse remembers this exchange. He had no idea that Gabe had been recording messages for him. He'd assumed it was more paperwork, because it is almost always more paperwork.

"Well, hurry up," Jesse says in the vid, and watching it, Jesse has to smile at how impatient he sounds. "I want to spend as much time with you as I can before you head out."

"I'm going to miss you," Gabe says.

"I'm going to miss you too," Jesse says in the vid, still speaking into Gabe's neck, before squeezing him in an approximation of a hug and withdrawing.

When he's gone, Gabe looks back to the camera. "I'm going to miss you. I'm missing you." He smiles again, small and sad. "I know that this is how it has to be. It's what we signed up for. But..."

There's a noise in the room, and Jesse looks up. Under the string of twinkly lights, the door is opening--there's only one person it could be, but it _couldn't_ be, could it?

Gabe walks through the door. He says _hey, Jesse_ , and he smiles.

"You're not supposed to be here," Jesse says, wonder in his voice, getting up to meet Gabe at the door.

"It's good to see you too," Gabe says, pulling Jesse into his arms. He's _there_ , warm and solid, and Jesse lets himself burrow into the feeling for several long moments, just breathing. His bad mood evaporates.

Then he pulls away, holding Gabe at arm's length, examining him. "What are you doing here? You're not supposed to be back here for three more weeks."

"Mission parameters changed," Gabe says, shrugging. He looks away, not meeting Jesse's eyes, and Jesse knows better than to ask about a mission like this. "I finished up early and called in some favors to get back here in time for Christmas--one last present for you. Merry Christmas."

"It's just what I wanted. How did you know?" Jesse says, his tone a little teasing but his voice thick with emotion. He pulls Gabe close again, and this time he doesn't let go.


End file.
